Wonderful Web 2.0 Worlds

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The future of eCommerce, as far as my imagination goes, is not Amazon, Flipkart or any other online stores we indulge in today but is in small targeted blogs and store fronts.

All these mega online stores offer so many things for sale that they can't meaningfully promote or suggest any of their products to their customers. They are like a warehouse on sale. Chaotic, overwhelming and eventually only good for binge shopping!

Don't see the problem yet? Let me explain! Imagine a blog that recommends the best products for a purpose to a particular demographic and then makes it possible to purchase the same at the best price on the web. For example, imagine a blog that specializes in piecing together an office attire for women in their thirties or a blog that recommends the best gadgets for smart home enthusiasts, etc. Compare that to a big grid of thumbnails with prices on Amazon. You may have thousands to choose from but in the end the very choice leaves you confused.

Such blogs can not only create the desire to own and use / flaunt something - holy grail of retail - but can also eliminate choice anxiety - the burden of choosing from a sea of undifferentiated products. Its like affiliate marketing on steroids where the big portals confine themselves to inventory, transaction and logistics management and leave the point of sale to third parties.

This way the bloggers / storefronts can concentrate on sales and make money from every purchase (commission) and referral (CPC) they generate while the big brother makes better margins on his inventory without having to offer huge discounts to generate sales.

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The way I see it, the World Wide Web is stuck with 'Search'! Yes, I understand the utility and ingenuity in being able to find the stuff we want but the Web has more to offer than that. I believe, the Web is as much about introducing us to new things that never crossed our minds as about providing the information we seek and we cannot search the Web for stuff we are not yet aware of! Even the original idea of content linking to other content (hyperlinks) only goes so far as content creators cannot link their content to stuff they are not (yet) aware of!

Off late, social feedback and curation have become a formidable force on the Web but we only come across what our peers find interesting and relevant there by limiting our field of vision to that of our friends / curators. It more or less boils down to a push-pull model where creators / curators push the stuff somewhere and seekers pull it from there with some form of voting / propagation mechanism in between.

Can we do away with all the explicit social curation mechanisms and create a smart service that can act as a personalized navigation system for the Web? I believe we can as we have already built something similar for Talkonomy. We call it the 'Navigator' (Suggestions shown on the right!) and it helps people navigate and explore Talkonomy! And the best part is this technology can be extended to the whole Web if desired!

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Exploring the Unexplored

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Alistair Riddoch,
Contributor
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2 years agoEdit

there are also accumulators and distributors of things interesting. Like "I F@$#ing Love Science. That weekly sends "what happened in science this week". they pay people to spend time looking for things that are interesting to me. (and every other subscriber).

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Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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2 years agoEdit

@Alistair - What you are talking about are Curation services, free or paid! But curation by humans is never exhaustive and suffers from same bias and context bubbles. While a human curator can read 100 new articles a day an algorithm can process 100 million of them. And in this case, the algorithmic processor is not judging content but their viewers. If a particular page is interesting to a viewer who has same temperament as you, it recommends you that page. Just like Google counting backlinks.

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Alistair Riddoch,
Contributor
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2 years agoEdit

any time we allow technology to be the only filter, we lose the opportunity to utilize a special skill that humans have that machines may take a while to be taught. The ability to hear what is not said, pick up on things conveniently or purposely left out. Read between the lines. You hear Al Gore say 6 glaciers are melting. A machine hears 6 glaciers are melting. I hear 6 out of how many are melting. The answer is significant. 6/100,000.

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Alistair Riddoch,
Contributor
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2 years agoEdit

Not that there are not more than 6 that experienced some meting, but the fact that Al Gore mentioned 6 and failed to mention 999,994 may have gone unnoticed and unexplored by AI. I imagine processing and access to prewritten standardized algorithms for just about every purpose will over time become common place. repository with thousands of house designs, take over for low level architects, things like that. But there may always be a niche for human inspired thought.

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Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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2 years agoEdit

@Alistair - You got me wrong. The technology I am talking about only cross recommends content between people with similar interests. Its not a filter. Lets say, you and I have some similar interests - inferred from our conversations here and elsewhere. Now when you read a new article on ScienceDaily and participate there, this algorithm suggests me that article to read. Its a large counting and correlating machine that taps into human intelligence to intelligently recommend content.

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Alistair Riddoch,
Contributor
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2 years agoEdit

yes I may have been misunderstanding. I've reread.

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Many attribute the success of various Web 2.0 services to 'Network Effect', which says that the more the participants on a platform the more attractive and rewarding it is for new comers and bystanders to jump in. While 'Network Effect' can explain their growth, it boils down to an intractable 'Chicken and Egg Situation' in the very early days of these services. How will a service grow from 0 to its first 100 participants or so, if every other prospective user is looking for a critical level of activity and population to come aboard? There must be something else at work all through the life of a successful service!

In my opinion 'Circular Inspiration' is the missing piece of this puzzle and services such as Facebook, Instagram, Quora, etc. depend on it to achieve critical mass and growth. If we take the case of Instagram, one user's creativity and pictures inspire another user to get creative and share his own pictures which further inspire the first user to get more creative and share even more pictures. We can see how inspiration travels back and forth in circles fueling activity, the life blood of any service . Even though this phenomenon grows stronger with the number of participants, it requires only two people to start the whole rendezvous. Its not hard to imagine how the same phenomenon is at work on many other services and platforms.

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Circular Inspiration

2 Comments

Alistair Riddoch,
Contributor
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2 years agoEdit

I think it is getting so the Internet can be almost viewed as a live, thinking entity. You can "meld" with it. It has memory, experiences, thoughts, opinions, all stored in it. It is an awesome resource that is accelerating many things on this planet. Understandings, communication, freedom, fairness, goodness etc.

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Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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2 years agoEdit

@Alistair - Any system behaves more like the sum of its parts. Internet or precisely World Wide Web is nothing but a communication medium between intelligent agents (Humans) and many elements on the web (blogs, email endpoints, websites, etc.) encapsulate individuals / groups; hence when seen as an entity in itself, reacts and behaves more like an intelligent system.

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Recently, I was browsing through my music library (mp3s) and found that many songs I ripped / digitized long back (from CDs and tape) were either corrupt or were of inferior quality than those available through iTunes, etc. today. Legally I own that music but have no way of refreshing my library to a better quality available elsewhere.

It then suddenly occurred to me that why can't there be a service where I can upload my music and download alternative / better versions of the same from it. Technically and legally I am only swapping my music and not downloading anything that I do not already own. The service just stores and identifies the music me and others upload and allows us to download alternative versions of the music we already own.

The service can also remember the music I own and upload so that I can download better / alternate versions of the same as and when they are made available by other members of the community. FLAC fans will love this!!!

A Legal Web 2.0 Music Swapping / Library Service! Sounds feasible :-)

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Legal Web 2.0 Music Swapping / Library Service

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Nicholas Bc Shumate,
Evangelist
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3 years agoEdit

I'm guessiyg it would run off of cloud storage? Truly a great idea!

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Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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3 years agoEdit

@Nicholas - Thanks for the compliments! The service can be hosted on a custom built data center or on third party service providers such as Amazon. But for end-users it will act as a pseudo-cloud store to which you can upload your music and download the same music in a plethora of bitrates. Of course you may not be able to download the same file you uploaded as the service discards redundant files for space efficiency and keeps only the best copy for a given track at pre-chosen bitrates.

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Nicholas Bc Shumate,
Evangelist
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3 years agoEdit

@Praveen- I look back and curse at all the money I've lost over the years with music downloads that didn't survive a computer switch, or CD's that didn't survive at all, and this could end all of that frustration with the click of a button and network connection. How would it work with 3rd party companies?

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Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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3 years agoEdit

@Nicholas - As such it does not require any partnership with any company to start with. Users upload their tracks and download the same tracks from the pool with the added flexibility of choosing the desired format and quality. If other companies want to partner with us and provide value added services (Ex. DTS, AC3, etc. versions) it can be done too. Lets say you uploaded a track but there are no available community provided alternatives for that track a partner may provide them for a price.

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RamGopal Neerukonda,
Evangelist
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3 years agoEdit

I used to be in the same state,loosing all the important Movies/Videos/PPT's. Then,Google answered my queries with YouTube and later many companies started making money with the video hosting services.I think this can also be achieved.Earlier utube provided facility to download in different formats as it effected the revenue i think it was stopped.Even though we can tweak to download from utube through websites and apps

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Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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3 years agoEdit

@Ram - This is a completely different concept to YouTube (Publishing) or for that matter DropBox (Storage). Here you are earning the right to download a particular track by first uploading that track. DropBox lets you store your music in the cloud and YouTube hosts your own videos but here once you prove your ownership you can download the same track in a plethora of formats and bitrates (better or worse) uploaded by others like you.

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RamGopal Neerukonda,
Evangelist
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3 years agoEdit

@Praveen Yes, I am trying to explain the flexibility of formats for downloading the uploaded file(Music).As we know there are many websites and apps which allows you to download youtube video in different formats. Dropbox is all about pushing and pulling your own data stored in a cloud.we should not constrain it to a single user all the genuine/authorized users should be able to download the music in desired formats/bitrates.It depends on owner whether he allows users to take it for free/paid.

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Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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3 years agoEdit

@Ram - Except for record companies and their authorised distributors, end-users are not allowed to resell the music they have purchased for their own personal consumption.

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RamGopal Neerukonda,
Evangelist
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3 years agoEdit

@Praven we are on the same page just check my previous comments if you are a owner(having permissions to sell) then you can fix some price and make it available in the system,so the customers will be allowed to use only after paying the owner/distributor claimed price.To make it clear I am talking about the one-many model.on the other side every individual can store there music and download it later in the desired format for free(as he is the solo owner of his own file).let us know your thoughts

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Praneeth Baratam,
Evangelist
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3 years agoEdit

@Praveen, Google is currently offering a similar service in principle known as Google Play Music in the US. You can upload your music library to the cloud, and stream to any number of devices including PCs, android phones and iOS devices(webapp only) at user-chosen quality settings of low, medium and high quality (highest at 320kbps). The stream bitrate is agnostic of upload quality. You can also choose to download your library to any number of devices, but only at the original source bitrate.

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Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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3 years agoEdit

@Praneeth - The idea was partly inspired by Google's Play Music service and extends it for more utility and convenience beyond streaming by giving the choice to the end-users once they prove their ownership. I believe its both doable and legal!

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Jeffrey Harrison White,
Contributor
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2 years agoEdit

Great idea. There could be a sales application too. Users are more inclined to "own" their music, because they know that in the future, as better, more Hi-Def options become available, they can upgrade for free.

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Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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2 years agoEdit

@Jeffrey - True! One more reason to build this service. Moreover, it would be great if existing music stores allow their customers to download the music they already purchased from them in the format and quality they desire.

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Alistair Riddoch,
Contributor
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2 years agoEdit

@Jeffrey That is a good idea, and opens the door for a good corollary service. Take this idea and spread it to movies. Perhaps people could ship in old videos and DVDs and get permanent access to those titles online, in good quality.

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Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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2 years agoEdit

@Alistair - Swapping video content is a bit more complicated. When you buy Video, you are not licensing the best format from the publisher. You are buying that particular quality Eg. VOD, DVD, BluRay, 4k, etc. On the other hand, with Audio, you are already purchasing the best available quality - CD or Equivalent. Hence swapping is justifiable legally.

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Inability to follow your favorite topics sans others from your favorite sources seems to be a fatal deficiency in the web ecosystem! Yes there is Twitter, but Twitter only lets you follow a source ( person / group / entity ) in toto and not selectively.

Let me elaborate! Imagine you like the way Frank (an imaginary person) relates to 'Politics' but don't care about his numerous rants about 'Technology', 'Sports', etc. Now, ideally you should be able to follow #politics from @frank i.e. politics@frank or frank@politics, which ever sounds more idiomatic, but such an option doesn't yet exist on any web-service / web.

The closest thing you can get to this pattern is when Frank writes a blog and categorizes / tags his posts with a provision to subscribe to the RSS feeds of those categories / tags. Many blogging solutions offer such RSS feeds and one can easily subscribe to such feeds from his favorite reader.

However, if you didn't follow the scheme detailed in the previous paragraph, don't be intimidated! You are not alone! It may be a cakewalk for the web savvy but not for the rest of us humble folks on the web.

Why not emphasize categories / tags everywhere on the web and put a simple 'Follow' button on each one of them? This way we can follow what we love more selectively and reduce the information load on us! :-)

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Follow in toto or selectively by Tag, Topic, etc.

One comment

Praveen Baratam,
Maven
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2 years agoEdit

Check out Mad About Technology ( http://goo.gl/RX2VMM ), a tech site in the making, to see this pattern in action. You can follow MAT in toto from its home page or selectively by category ( http://goo.gl/J2mGpe ), author ( http://goo.gl/fwnzTh ), tag, etc. from the respective pages on the site. You can even follow a search term a la Google. MAT uses Feedly, a web service, to achieve the above but I believe we can do much better with a service specially crafted for this purpose!

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